Parents have become so convinced that educators know what is best for their children that they forget that they themselves are really the experts.

When I fight about what is going on in the neighborhood, or when I fight about what is happening to other people’s children, I’m doing that because I want to leave a community and a world that is better than the one I found.

Much of what I do now stems from my rage at segregation and discrimination. I can't stand to see children not able to do anything, anybody not able to do what they can do. The daily lessons of exclusion, having hand-me-down books in schools, of seeing ambulances turn away and not give health care for people lying in the streets who are migrant workers. Everything I do today stems from that segregated existence.

You're not obligated to win. You're obligated to keep trying to do the best you can every day.

A nation that does not stand for its children does not stand for anything and will not stand tall in the future.

Whoever said anybody has a right to give up?

We must not, in trying to think about how we can make a big difference, ignore the small daily differences we can make which, over time, add up to big differences that we often cannot foresee.